Luna Junction 1 Feasts with Wolves (W) (3 page)

I swiftly exited the bedroom and
closed the door. I couldn’t believe what I’d been contemplating,
brief though the flash of lust had been. Next thing you knew I’d be
all Becca Blowjobbing it all over the place.

I backtracked and found the correct
door with the bathroom on the other side. As I was washing my hands
I heard the hiss of angry male voices. I switched off the sink and
flicked the light off.

“
You’ve been up my ass to
mate since the day I turned eighteen.”

“
And you thought you’d
playing this human joke with that poor girl would force me to
relent?”

“
Aw come on. She ain’t got
a clue. It was a dirty trick, pop. Bringing Claire here. Look,
Tatum’s an okay chick but that’s all there is to it. Nothing is
being jeopardized. ”

“
Listen to me boy, that
girl’s not as vacant as you think. And there’s something about
her…”

“
Why don’t you fucking mate
with her then?”

“
Watch your mouth.
I’m-“

“
What is it?”

“
She’s listening. Shit,
Matt.” Cade Landon let out a string of further obscenities and it
sounded as if he punched the wall. I had virtually stopped
breathing as I tried to puzzle through the odd father/son
interaction.

“
Tatum,” Cade called and
the sound of his voice speaking my name lit another skip of my
heart. “Come on out here, Tatum. The man of the house needs to have
a chat with you.”

Chapter 3

There was really nothing else I could
do but open the door. Matthew looked at me worriedly as his
father’s hooded dark eyes gave me that same undressed stare which
caught me off balance earlier. I gazed back at him defiantly and
his eyes flickered with surprise. I had the crazy idea he was able
to read the wicked thoughts I’d been entertaining in his bedroom.
“Go on, Matt,” Cade told his son. “I promised Tatum a
talk.”

Matthew didn’t look at me
again as he hurried away. The back door slammed a few seconds
later. I clasped my hands behind my back and tried to appear cool
and untroubled though my heart pounded like a drum. Cade Landon
watched me for a long moment. I had no idea what to make of the
conversation I had overheard. The Landon men seemed to own their
own private terminology.
Mate?
I supposed I could chalk it up to the same
regional and cultural differences which led petite Claire to rip
through a bloody steak as if she were a zoo animal, but I felt a
growing disquiet. Something was a little off about these
folks.

Cade’s face had become inscrutable as
he appeared to be silently wrestling which something I could only
speculate on. I continued to meet his stare thought the nearness of
his body and the subtle smoky scent which emanated from him left me
a bit weak-kneed. Cade briefly rubbed the bearded stubble on his
chin and then sighed, beckoning. “Follow me to the kitchen,
Tatum.”

I was rewarded with a really long look
at Cade Landon’s firm rear end as I trailed him like a puppy. The
kitchen was empty. Cade flashed me a grin. “I’m sure you’re hungry.
I hadn’t prepared lunch in consideration of a visitor such as
yourself.” Cade removed his flannel shirt and tossed it onto a
chair. His white t-shirt did nothing to hide the muscular swells of
his chest and arms. My mouth watered. He began searching through
cabinets and removing pots and pans. “Grab me the eggs from the
fridge, would you?”

I obeyed and Cade began expertly
cracking eggs into a bowl. He swiftly located a half dozen other
ingredients and began tossing things into the bowl without
measuring as a cast iron pan was heated with a thin coating of oil.
He didn’t look up as he whisked everything together. “You want to
ask some questions”

“
How old are you?” It just
popped out of my mouth. He still seemed awful youthful to be
Matthew’s real father.

He laughed lightly. “That’s not a
question I was expecting.” He let the whisk fall into the bowl and
leaned on the counter with both hands, looking at me intently. “I
was your age when Matthew was born.”

“
So you’re, like,
fortyish?”

“
Close to it.”

“
Oh, well that’s
okay.”

“
I’m glad to hear
it.”

I blushed. Forty seemed impossible
eons away, as it probably did to all nineteen year olds. However,
standing in Cade Landon’s kitchen and secretly yearning after his
powerful body made it seem altogether reachable. Still,
chronological age aside, Cade seemed to possess a raw youthful
energy which eluded my own father despite his adolescent
antics.

“
Okay, for my next
question. What’s your deal about Claire and Matthew?”

Cade shrugged. “She makes him happy.
And he’s of the age where he needs to take a mate.”

Mate.
There was that bizarrely feral word again. What did it mean?
Screwing? Marrying? What?? “Look, I obviously walked into the
middle of something. I feel kind of awkward.”

Cade resumed whisking the contents of
the bowl. “Understandable. Would you like to leave?”

“
I think maybe I
should.”

He grinned at me rakishly. “I don’t
want you to leave.”

And with that my libido lurched
fiercely. I wanted to feather my fingers through his dark hair and
press my nipples against his hard chest and then…and
then…

“
Tatum?” Cade was looking
at me strangely.

“
Yes,” I
breathed.

“
Would you do me a favor
and stir the eggs?”

Red faced, I stepped over to the stove
and began limply sifting the gooey egg mixture with a steel
spatula. Typically I couldn’t cook my way out of a paper bag. Cade
had moved over to the sink and was rinsing off a pile of spinach.
Every nerve in my body was agonizingly aware of his proximity. This
was nothing like the lukewarm effect Matthew had on me. The idea
that I’d ever seriously entertained having sex with Matthew already
seemed completely absurd. I’d been mildly attracted to him, in part
because it seemed like I should be. But the feverish want my body
suffered over the nearness of Cade Landon was incomparable. Even as
I realized the terrible unlikelihood that he saw me as anything
other than his son’s little college friend.

“
No, like this.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin when
his large hand suddenly covered mine. With his fingers firmly
around my wrist he guided the movement of the spatula, scraping the
sides of the pan. With his other hand he tossed in the additional
ingredients and then paused, not moving but not taking away his
hand either. I was terribly conscious of his broad chest at my back
and wanted only to melt into his heat. As we watched the bubbling
egg mixture his strong thumb began casually stroking the inside of
my wrist. One did not think of the lower hand as a distinctly
erogenous zone but the stroke of his fingers across that intensely
sensitive skin threatened to render me delirious. As if that
weren’t enough, I felt the warm press of his other hand around my
waist. He squeezed the generous curve of my hip and inserted a
thumb into the top of my waistband.

I couldn’t breathe. I was a hapless
puddle of erotic mush. Nothing in my history of bland semi-sexual
encounters had summoned this suffocating crush of heat. I had
assumed such urgency was the stuff of fiction.

Cade squeezed my body against his more
forcefully and I could feel him now. The hardened shaft of his need
pressed into my backside. “Now flip,” he commanded and seized my
wrist more tightly, guiding the movement of the spatula to catch
the blanket of eggs and flipping the mass over to cook on the other
side.

I could feel his breath on my neck.
His hand dropped my wrist. The other hand left my waist. I was
completely unprepared for what happened next. Cade’s hands reached
across my front and then skated down, nestling in the warm V
between my legs. Dimly I heard my own gasp as he caressed me, first
softly and then with more pressure. His nimble fingers located that
intense bundle of nerves which I’d played with once or twice and
impatiently I clutched his hands, guiding his movement in the way I
needed. I could feel his ready organ between the layers of clothing
separating us and vaguely I realized we were in the Landon family
kitchen in broad daylight and that a variety people could
conceivably wander in. Somehow I didn’t care.

Suddenly, Cade’s hands left my body.
He removed the pan from the heated burner and switched off the
stove. I gripped the counter, unsure my jellylike legs would
support me. Every inch of my skin which had shuddered under his
touch still fizzed with electricity.

Cade opened the cabinet above the sink
and removed a plain white plate and a wine glass. He scraped the
contents of the pan onto the plate and placed it in front of me.
Without a word he uncorked a bottle of wine and poured it into the
glass. That too he placed before me.

“
I’m not twenty one,” I
managed to say. “It’s against the law.”

Cade Landon regarded me with
amusement. “Tatum, there are many things which are against the
law.” And with that he left me in the kitchen with my meal and my
unsatisfied passions.

I took a bite of the egg dish. It was
good. I had a dim memory of eating something similar when I was a
kid, in the distant days when my mother cooked and my father came
home every night.

Every last bite was finished in short
order. I was sipping wine and puzzling through my thoughts, trying
to make sense of the dry hump fest in front of the stove. Matthew’s
younger brother, Zane, entered the kitchen. For a heart stopping
second I saw only the dark hair I thought it was Cade. Zane seemed
surprised to find me there.

I tried to sound like I hadn’t been on
the precipice of orgasm moments before. “Your father was nice
enough to cook especially for me.”

Zane nodded, looking vaguely troubled.
“Did he say anything to you?”

“
About what?”

Zane shifted and appeared nervous.
“About us.”

Now it was my turn to look troubled.
What the hell had Matthew Landon gotten me into anyway? “Why does
everyone seem to think I should be in on some big
secret?”

Zane was thoughtful for a moment.
“Well, if you’re staying I guess you’ll see everything at the party
tomorrow.”

“
Party? Like a Christmas
party?”

He smiled. “Hmm, more or
less.”

“
You going to give me a
hint about what it is I’m in for? I mean, do you all morph into
zombies after dark?”

Zane found that funny. “No, not
zombies.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets and, still
laughing, left the kitchen. I stared after him for a moment and
then finished the glass of wine.

Chapter 4

I still had no idea where
to find my living quarters for the duration of my stay and I was
unwilling at this point to begin opening doors willy nilly. Whether
from the wine, from the mysterious manners I’d encountered or from
the residual feel of Cade Landon’s hands, I felt very unsettled. I
stepped into the hallway intending to head out the back and locate
Claire. I jumped when I glimpsed my flushed face in a small wall
mirror. My eyes were oddly bright and my cheeks red as apples. I
needed a shower. I needed a nap. I
needed
Cade Landon’s persistent
fingers fondling me again.

The only hint of Claire on the back
patio was a few drops of steak blood which had dripped onto the
flagstones. The weather had turned sharply colder yet and was
imbued with a heaviness which was absent from the dry air of the
southern part of the state. The distant gray clouds had moved
closer, reinforcing Matthew’s predictions of a snow sky.

Matthew’s truck remained
exactly where he’d parked it earlier. The Chevy which had been
recklessly driven by the twins had been deposited at an angle about
fifty yards away. Beyond the small clearing surrounding the house
and barn were thick expansive woods. Standing there alone under the
gray winter sky and hearing only the whistle of the frigid wind it
was easy to imagine a thousand malevolent eyes staring at me from
those woods. Julia From New York said I frightened too easily. None
of her more cosmopolitan friends screamed like howler monkeys when
that chick from
Paranormal Activity
morphed into a demon with rabies. I preferred to
think I’m just imaginative.

Not knowing where to try first, I
headed to the brick-colored barn on the edge of the woods. It was
weather beaten and boxy and looked about two hundred years old. I
hadn’t seen any animals wandering around but presumably the
building served some sort of purpose. Crossing my arms in front of
my numb breasts, I crossed the distance rapidly. My hand was
reaching for the splintered latch when I heard rhythmic thumps and
pleasure moans. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who was all bumping
uglies on the other side of that door so I gingerly backed away. My
boot heel caught on a stick, snapping it in half. I didn’t think
the sound was that loud but the thumping promptly ceased and a low
growl scared the crap out me. I had been bitten by a wicked
Pomeranian when I was three and ever since then tended to keep the
furry things at a safe distance.